“That, if I can—if I am too late—” the veins stood out on his forehead and a light foam gathered on his lips. “Do you not think I shall avenge him?” he asked pitifully.
Katherina answered as if he had been a child.
CHAPTER II
EUROPE, absorbed in the war of the Spanish Succession, paid no heed to the Czar’s bitter protests against Saxony and Sweden, and Patkul was sent to Kazimicry.
Peter, with an army of 60,000 trained men, officered by Germans, obtained secretly from the Emperor of Austria, who was alarmed by the near approach of the terrible Swede, marched into Poland.
General Lewenhaupt was not able to guard the entries into this country which was neither fortified nor united, and the Czar took Lublin which had been left without a Swedish garrison, and there convoked a Diet on the model of that of Varsovia, thereby further distracting an already thrice distracted country.
Augustus was now as hateful as Stanislaus in the eyes of Peter, and his project was to give all that the Elector had renounced by the peace of Altranstadt to a third king; he had in his mind Racoczy, Prince of Transylvania.
Russian gold and Russian promises soon gained a powerful faction in Poland; Peter exerted himself to please.
His portrait, enriched with diamonds, was presented to the officers who had fought at Kalisz, and gold and silver medals to the soldiers; it was the Czar’s great pride to mention that these records of his first victory had been struck in his new capital.